


As Above, So Below

by CombatBaby (ellehumour)



Category: DCU (Comics), Hawkman (Comics), Hawkworld - Fandom
Genre: Character Death Fix, Fan Comics, Fanart, Flashbacks, Gen, I did not like Hawkman after Rebirth so I did this instead, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, space adventures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-10-21 00:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10674237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellehumour/pseuds/CombatBaby
Summary: Shayera Thal, maladjusted Thanagarian misfit and alien formerly known as Hawkwoman, is alive. She's like... 99.5% sure she's alive. How she came to be that way is anyone's guess, but you know that Earth saying about looking a gift horse in the mouth.This is a multi-part fan comic - not a prose fic! Fan comic! note the character count! The story is told entirely through images! - that centers on New Earth's Shayera Thal. "Graphic depictions of violence" refers to fairly standard comic-book fight scene stuff. Warnings for language, brief discussions of past abuse in future chapters, references to (past) drug use in future chapters, and general prejudice/oppression (both sci-fi allegory and regular Earth-style prejudice/oppression).





	1. Knowing Is Half The Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Flashback scenes in this chapter are adapted/condensed from Tim Truman's 1989 Hawkworld trilogy, books one and three respectively, by Tim Truman, Alcatena, Sam Parsons, Tim Harkins, and Mike Gold.

End of chapter one! Here's some text to fill out the character quota! Also, a brief note on image descriptions! I know they're good to have and it makes stuff more accessible. However, the text box where an image description goes in the rich text editor is... not very well suited for the more extensive descriptions that full pages of comic book art/dialogue need. Additionally, as a side project this is um, kind of time consuming, and I don't totally have the werewithall to edit and tailor image descriptions in addition to doing these pages. I'm open to other people transcribing them, although I doubt this project will have enough readership for that, whatever. 

I'm really attached to this thing, and have been wanting to do it for ages, but the ideas only recently solidified in my head enough to get them down on paper. If you're curious about the past events referenced in this (there are short flashback sequences throughout the work that call back to a bunch of different titles), feel free to ask - I'll try to mention the specific issue numbers and creative teams that produced the stuff I reference, but if I don't actually own a physical copy of the issue in question and am just going from memory that might be tougher. We'll see.

Next time: A good old-fashioned space prison ship mutiny. 


	2. What We Do In The Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things could be worse for our heroine, but they could be a lot better, too. Prisoner of Gordanian slavers, presumed dead by everyone she's ever known (or at least, by everyone she's ever known who is not themselves dead or presumed dead), with a memory that's spotty at best, Shayera Thal's options are pretty limited. Fortunately, there's no bad time for a good old-fashioned prisoner revolt! Or maybe there is - this plan might still need some work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flashbacks in this chapter refer to events from Hawkworld 5 and 6 by the creative team of Ostrander, Truman, Nolan, and Gold; Hawkman 17 by the creative team of Johns, Morales, and Bair; and Hawkworld 24 by the creative team of Ostrander, Nolan, and Gold. I have taken some liberties in adapting the events of those issues for the limited space I had here, but tried to preserve the spirit of the original stories.

That's it for chapter two! Here is some more text to fulfill character count! "Shadowlord" is a term for an underground resistance leader based out of the Downside on Thanagar - it's a position and term popularized by the resistance work of Katar Hol, that was (presumably) carried on after his absence and eventual death. 

Next time: An old enemy resurfaces, an old friend returns, and PTSD is, like, a thing. 


	3. Bad Pennies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where does an alien ex-cop who was recently resurrected under as-yet-mysterious circumstances start to... do literally anything? A remote trading outpost in deep space seems as good a place as any. For better or for worse, though, lost things have a way of turning up - just like that nagging flash of insight you can only avoid for so long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's only one flashback here! It refers to Shayera's death in the Rann-Thanagar War, which was put out by the creative team of Gibbons, Reis, Campos, and Kalisz. Byth's reference to "Jonesy" is a callback to the time he murdered Shayera's first serious boyfriend, which happened in Hawkworld #7, by Ostrander, Truman, Nolan and Kwapisz. The bit with Shayera and Katar watching Summerslam '94 is not actually in any comic, but it is canon (as mentioned in a Hawkworld annual) that Shayera is into pro wrestling, and I never felt like we got to see enough of Shayera and Katar just chilling out as actual romantic partners so I embellished a little, whatever. I don't know if Shayera actually likes Nirvana or if she's just wearing that shirt to wear it. I guess she's probably into that late 80's/early 90's grunge stuff, if the fringed leather jacket she wore after leaving Katar was any indication - but she also seems like a pretty obvious fan of classic 90's rap and hip-hop. YMMV.

 

This concludes chapter three, which actually brings this story to the page count of a normal single issue of a monthly comic book, which is a milestone I'm weirdly proud of! Anyway, Sirius (the sentient AI space ship) is a character who will get more explanation/elaboration in the next chapter, so if the ending of this makes no sense to you right now, don't worry about it, it's a whole thing, and if I ever pass up a chance to wrestle with issues of AI sentience and the concepts of consent and agency etc in a story please assume that I am dead. Sirius is especially relevant given the overall project of this comic, which is primarily about characters who have been denied agency in (some of) the stories they were featured in getting some power over their own lives. 

I knew I wanted this chapter to feature a member of the Green Lantern corps but I waffled for a while on which character. I'm not TOTALLY up on where Kilowog is actually at in current DC canon but I figure having him show up in a relatively random deep space location wouldn't be too out of character, and he was involved in the Rann-Thanagar War, so he ultimately made the most sense. As much as I would like to have an excuse for Shayera Thal to interact with John Stewart or (speaking of John Stewart) a reincarnated Katma Tui, both of those characters would have been a little too conceptually complicated for this little mini-arc. 

Next time, some more stuff happens! I handwave a bunch of weird comic book sci-fi technology shit! More aliens and at least one human, probably! 


	4. The Same River Twice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers." - Heraclitus
> 
> News of Shayera's return has reached a heroine on Earth who's legacy has been deliberately buried and forgotten for years, as old friends (and new allies) ready their own response. But they're not the only ones who remember Shayera Thal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I want to issue a content warning for this chapter - there is a scene that makes a reference to a past occurrence of child sexual abuse. It's not described in detail, but there's really no way to address Shayera's parents and the circumstances of her birth without mentioning it. The reference happens in the first row of panels on Page 2. This is a flashback sequence, and it isn't inspired by any scene that actually took place in the comics - I've always had complicated feelings about how the revelation that Shayera is the daughter of Andar Pul and the original Shayera Thal was handled in Hawkworld. It's a weird narrative twist, which served a specific purpose but also had a lot of really difficult implications that were never wholly addressed (which honestly is fine with me, since I think the constraints of Hawkworld as a series wouldn't have served that particularly well). 
> 
> I've also started using some basic color stuff to indicate when flashbacks begin and end. I probably should have done this from the beginning - when I originally started laying out these pages, I thought I might colour them and use variations in colour work to demarcate flashback sequences, but that very quickly proved to be too time-consuming, so I just took to posting the line work, and I feel like sometimes the flashback scenes are a little jarring with no visual indication of when they are separate from the current story. I'll be going with this from now on. At some point I may go back and edit previous chapters accordingly.
> 
> Anyway! Scenes referenced in this chapter: 
> 
> Hawkworld #10 by Ostrander, Nolan, Kwapisz and Gold - this isn't really how this conversation happens in that comic but I more or less had to condense it so whatever, apologies all around. Also, The Rann-Thanagar War #5, by Gibbons, Reis, Prado and Campos; Hawkman volume 3 #33 by Priest, Collins, and Kaalberg; Hawkworld #25 by Ostrander, Nolan, and Gold; Hawkman volume 4 #17 by Johns, Morales, and Bair; and Hawkworld #16 by Ostrander, Nolan and Gold. Whew! To be fair most of these references are super brief. 
> 
> Sharon Parker's last speaking appearance in any comic that I'm aware of was a flashback sequence in Hawkworld #23, in which we are told (by Martian Manhunter) that she's dead. I'm calling that a clever ruse, because I can - and this will be explained in a later chapter, but basically I figure "if we don't see a body, they're not actually dead" applies here. When Sharon dies, we do not actually SEE her die - we see her badly injured, and then J'Onn J'Onzz tells us that she died, and we assume he's telling the truth because that's all the information we get. But between Martian Manhunter and Amanda Waller (who is also present in the flashback sequence), I think it's not a huge reach to suppose that there's more to that story than we get at the time. Some of that will come out later in this comic.

At this point it's probably becoming a bit clearer which parts of recent comics canon I'm picking and choosing and which I'm not really dealing with. I'm often worried that people will Fake Geek Girl me for that sort of thing, but if that's the price I have to pay for a world where Isamot Kol is still alive and gets to sass other Thanagarian war heroes then so be it. 

The next chapter of this is pretty short, more of an interlude than anything else, but it should provide some important context and explanation for certain events so far. I'm not sure when it will go up - I have a huge deadline for a major professional project looming and that's taking up most of my time. 


End file.
